Migrating from vitest-react-native

If you used vitest-community/vitest-react-native and it stopped working on a newer Vitest, this is the continuation you're looking for.

The short version: it's the same idea, maintained. The original plugin and vitest-native's default engine share the same architecture — externalize React Native to Node, strip its Flow types through a require hook, and mock only the thin native boundary (View / Text / UIManager / NativeModules / …). The original simply went unmaintained through Vitest's module-runner rewrites (v2 → v3 → v4) and bit-rotted. vitest-native tracks current Vitest and React Native, and a CI matrix gates it across both so it stays alive.

For the common case — render real RN with RNTL, mock your own modules with vi.mock — migration is a config swap.

1. Swap the package

# remove the old plugin
npm rm vitest-react-native @vitejs/plugin-react

# add this one (+ the babel preset it uses to strip RN's Flow types)
npm i -D vitest-native @react-native/babel-preset @babel/core

Keep your existing vitest, vite, react, react-native, and @testing-library/react-native. Requirements: Vitest 4.x, Vite ^6.4.2, ^7.3.2, or ^8.0.5, the React version required by your RN release, React Native 0.81–0.85 (validated in CI), and RNTL 12–14. RNTL 14 uses async rendering APIs and (per RNTL's own requirements) needs Node 22.13 or 24+.

2. Update vitest.config

Before (vitest-react-native):

import reactNative from 'vitest-react-native'
import react from '@vitejs/plugin-react'
import { defineConfig } from 'vitest/config'

export default defineConfig({
  plugins: [reactNative(), react()],
})

After (vitest-native):

import { reactNative } from 'vitest-native'
import { defineConfig } from 'vitest/config'

export default defineConfig({
  plugins: [reactNative()],
})

Two changes:

• Named import — import { reactNative }, not a default import.
• Drop @vitejs/plugin-react — vitest-native configures the JSX runtime itself (both engines). Adding plugin-react alongside it is unnecessary and can double-transform.

That's it. reactNative() with no options resolves to the native engine (real RN) whenever @react-native/babel-preset is installed, which it now is.

3. Run

npx vitest run

Your existing tests render against real React Native exactly as before.

What's the same

• Real RN component rendering via @testing-library/react-native.
• vi.mock() of your own modules (anything in your app's source graph).
• Standard Vitest everything — expect, vi.fn, coverage, watch, UI.

What's new (and optional)

• Native is the zero-config default, but a fast mock engine is one option away — reactNative({ engine: 'mock' }) — for pure-logic and environment-control tests. A CI-gated cross-check keeps the mock behaviorally honest against real RN.
• Presets auto-shadow common native libraries (Reanimated, Gesture Handler, Safe Area, Navigation, …) the way jest mocks them — no per-lib wiring.
• An opt-in hot runtime (reactNative({ hotRuntime: true })) keeps RN warm across files for large suites while resetting app/test modules and common process-wide pollution between files. It uses Vitest's custom worker APIs and remains experimental.

Gotchas (the margins)

These are inherent to running RN externalized to Node — they applied to the original plugin too:

• vi.mock of an externalized RN-side library may not intercept. Libraries that load through Node (not your Vite source graph) bypass Vitest's mocker. Prefer a preset (if one exists) or mock at the boundary. Your own modules mock normally.
• Custom Babel plugins don't run. Transforms go through Vite/esbuild, not your babel.config.js. Flow/TS stripping for RN and allow-listed packages is handled by the require hook; use the transform allowlist for extra pure-JS packages that ship untranspiled source.

If something that worked under the old plugin doesn't here, open an issue — parity with vitest-react-native is a goal, and the cross-check corpus is how we prove it.